Cantref

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medieval Welsh administrative district of land made up of a hundred settlements, each known as a tref
2. An old unit of territory in medieval Wales, traditionally regarded as comprising one hundred villages or townships
3. A historical subdivision of land in Wales, used for local governance and organized around a group of one hundred trefi

Etymology: A cantref was a division of medieval Wales, and its name is a compound of two Welsh words: "cant", meaning "hundred", and "tref", meaning "village" or "settlement". The pairing points to the unit's original purpose. A cantref was conceived as a territory of a hundred settlements, though in practice the number was notional, and the area of each cantref varied considerably across the country. The word is recorded in Middle Welsh, the form of the language spoken roughly between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and it carried that administrative sense from the start. The Welsh word "cwmwd", meaning a smaller subdivision made up of several of these units, was used alongside it in medieval Welsh law and land organisation.

Synonyms: hundred